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John Bradshaw, author of the book Cat Sense, told Buzzfeed that it might just be because the newly taped 'circle' smells differently to what they're used to.

'To get yourself inside a cat's head you have to remember that cats use their ears and noses much more than we do, so what to us is just a circle may not be a circle as far as the cat's concerned,' he said.

'The cat may be interpreting it as "Here's a place on the floor that doesn't smell like it did five minutes ago; I'll go and sit down and see what happens."'

But Vicky Halls, author of a series of cat behavior books including Cat Confidential, told DailyMail.com in 2014 that it could be a survival mechanism.

'A cat is a solitary survivalist,' she says. 'It doesn't survive in a pack, so when it experiences something new it has to check out whether it is safe or dangerous itself, depending on the confidence of the cat.

'From a survival point of view, a cat would be foolish to ignore something new or be dismissive of it.'

So it turns out that curiosity doesn't kill the cat - very much the opposite. But is it the reason for 'cat squares'? Only the cats themselves truly know.

Paws: This user found themselves foiled by this big grey kitty's inability to actually fit inside their rectangle

Puppy power: An attempt to use the trick on this dog had the opposite effect - he wouldn't even step inside the square

Going in circles: The trick was a variation on an older prank, in which web users trapped their cats in circles - or in this case pentagons - of tape